Long & Winding Road . . .

I’ll changed this before I posted. There was a lotta crap I needed to get out but not necessarily share. This place seems to be a good place for that. Here and the counselors office.

[Place for edited out shit . . .]

Now, on to our irregularly scheduled post.

Bah, humbug! (I was going to put in a copy of the Burl Iverson version of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” but WP wants an additional $20 to be able to embed music. Ahhhhhh – NO.)

I am not normally very effusive when it comes to Christmas time. I tend to view it as a giant pain in the ass that disrupts . . . everything. It places demands on time, budget, creativity and patience and – stuff that I either have in short supply or tend to guard cautiously. All for a commercially over-hyped day where in you hope against hope that the presents you selected for your loved ones are at least well received, if not flat out adored.

Kind of a boring weekend here. Hit the gym Saturday morning then went in to work for a bit. Testing I was running there blew up, not literally, but the results were disappointing. Went home and defrosted the freezer, moved stuff from the back porch fridge to the main freezer. Got some moldings cut, getting ready to (finally) put the finishing touches on some rooms. (I hate molding)

Somehow dodged a bullet Saturday night. Cindy mentioned something about wanting to go out to dinner Saturday night because neither of us really had time to do any dinner prep. I acted less than enthused and went back to cut my moldings. Later in the afternoon she asked if I’d be ok with just calling Papa Joe’s for take out. (yes, we have so many Italians in this town even the Italian restaurants have drive-up take-out windows). I was fine with that because it got me out of telling Cindy I didn’t really want to go out with her after she’d spent the better portion of the afternoon sneaking drinks. (That was one of my homework assignments from my therapist team). She wasn’t sloppy drunk, but I could tell she’d been drinking because she had that sort of false happy working. Not a fake happy, those you can see too, but a false happy. She really believed she was happy, but it was only because she got her buzz on and thought she’d gotten away with it.

Actually, she DID get away with it because I didn’t call her on it. Am I in effect enabling her because I let her think she’s getting away with it? Or am I not nagging her? I guess as long as I keep it in terms of “I choose NOT to do something with a person that’s drinking” rather than “You’re drunk, I won’t be seen with you!” then I’m ok.

I still have opportunities to ‘keep in the moment’ and/or sharing how I feel. I may need to get some clarification between being in the moment and protecting boundaries though.

Day 1941 (Tuesday, 12/15)

One thing I aim to address in tonight’s counseling – Saturday and Sunday morning this past weekend. I understand that not everybody can be bright eyed & bushy tailed 5 minutes after crawling out of the sack. But. Maintaining a bitchy, crabby, sarcastic, uncommunicative and uncooperative attitude until one sneak ones first drink of the day mid afternoon is no way to get people you’re supposed to be in a relationship with to open up and share feelings. (Breathe!)

My mission – whether I select it or not – will be to find a graceful way to broach this subject at tonight’s session.

Eeee-gads! I got my money’s worth out of that one. It wasn’t overly graceful, but I did bring up my feelings of unease about Cindy’s surly morning and early afternoon attitudes. The bulk of her response? “I didn’t realize I was being like that. I had a lot of things I wanted to get done and was thinking about only those things, didn’t have time to worry about other stuff”. MY response? Being busy and needing to get stuff done does not excuse a total lack of civility.

Somehow that all got twisted into my complete and utter lack of enthusiasm towards decorating for Christmas this year. Shit. Here it is almost 2 days later and I finally realize that once again, I share how I felt about something (namely how I’ve been treated poorly for no known cause) and it gets turned around into being my fault again and she had the fucking gall to say that she didn’t think she was acting like an asshole at all.

Dammit. I hate when that happens. Someone text me a reminder about this before next weeks session. Matter of fact, I’m going to call our counselor/therapist gal and ‘splain the situation to her. I can believe I missed it, but I can’t believe Janine didn’t pick up on it. She got wrapped up in the adopted child/feelings of abandonment/investment in Christmas crap (as she explained it to me) and completely missed the left turn Cindy threw in there.

Now I’m going to be pissed about it all afternoon.

Company holiday gathering today. Bah, humjob! Hate those things. Went in, grabbed a plate of food & left. The entire buildings population in our cafeteria – that’s like 250 some people. Hors d’ouevre food scattered all over, having to weave through people just to go wait in line at each little serving station, eating standing up & moving, playing happyface with the entire flippin building. Ugh.

My biggest worry? My thumb. What with the dryness, my calluses have cracked, in spite of gallons of lotion. On top of that, the old exacto knife wound from last week also opened up yesterday, again due to the horrific dryness around here.

Laterer again. Bowling sucked. Worst night of the year. Four big, wide, unconvertable splits in the first game alone – 7 total for the night. I was so lost I’d sort of given up and started throwing straighter shots in from the corner. Felt safe when nothing was going right. Best game I had was 10 pins below my average. Ugh.

Highlight of the evening? Going to Rohrbach’s (German style restaurant with a micro brewery) after bowling with my brother/SIL, Zach, Jill & Cindy to do a little birthday celebrating. Brothers bday was the 5th, mine is the 18th, Cindy’s is the 20th. I will allow that their Rohrbach’s Vanilla Porter is quite delicious and induces sleep like nobody’s business.

Day 1944

Check THIS out:

Duration calculation results

From and including: Thursday, December 18, 19-something
To, but NOT including : Friday, December 18, 2009

It is 18,628 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date

Or 51 years excluding the end date.

18,628 days can be converted to one of these units:

1,609,459,200 seconds

26,824,320 minutes

447,072 hours

2661 weeks (rounded down)

According to my mom, at 7:45am today all that was exactly true. Over 1.5 billion seconds, more than 25 million minutes. Should I change my day count thing?

I’ll be enjoying an Edmund Fitzgerald tonight at home if anyone wants to join me. Email for directions. If you don’t want a dark, rich, chewy beer, I’ll dig up a lighter variety or something else entirely for ya.

Home now – got to go out & fix the snow blower. Seemed to have toasted the starter motor last week and it refuses to start by hand with last years stale gas in the tank. Fussy damn things. Plus there’s about 6 inches of snow in the driveway. Need to get that cleared out before the next batch arrives.

Remember that beer or ‘other beverage’ offer too. I’m thinking hot cocoa would be appropriate given the balmy 20 degrees it is right now . . .

Oh yes – Eric is officially an Onondaga County Sheriff today. He actually starts pulling shifts in the jai next week. Be nice or I’ll send you to visit him!